The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey (The Journals of Thomas Merton)

The Other Side of the Mountain is the seventh and final volume of Thomas Merton's journals, covering the last two years of his life. In this book, Merton finally makes peace with his ambivalent relationship to the Church: his civil rights and anti-nuclear work, his interest in Eastern spirituality, and his love for Catholic orthodoxy coalesce into a mature voice that avoids the frosty pieties to which he was often partial in his younger years. This volume takes its title from an entry made during his final travels in India and the Far East. In this entry, he relates a dream about gazing at the mountain Kanchenjunga:

I heard a voice saying--or got the clear idea of: "There is another side to the mountain." ... There is another side of Kanchenjunga and of every mountain--the side that has never been photographed and turned into postcards. That is the only side worth seeing.

The next month, Merton died from accidental electrocution in a hotel room in Bangkok. --Michael Joseph Gross